One of the most daunting aspects of living abroad is getting to grips with another language – and moving with children means communicating effectively is even more necessary. Why do adults find it so difficult?
Memory Loss
Language learning revolves around how well we remember things and children can do this much better than adults can. Those foreign athletes and politicians we see on the television who mesmerise us by speaking English fluently, probably started learning it at a very early age and have never looked back. Adults who were lucky enough to get the basic elementary rules of grammar at school but have never since practised, may find that it will come back to them – vaguely – once they are in the country.
For those of us who did not ‘do’ a language at school though, words and rules seem to go in through one ear and out of the other. Even then, we often have to see a sentence written down on paper to make any sense of it.
Saying It Correctly
Another problem is pronunciation. As with all things in life, the ability to ‘hear’ and mimic new words has not been distributed fairly. Hence some people say a word correctly the first time whilst some of us have to listen to it a number of times before it sinks in.
Adults are touchy about making mistakes and being corrected. We feel we are being criticised or attacked. Added to that, we are inhibited and feel embarrassed making these new shapes and noises with our mouths. It seems
so much easier to let someone else speak English to us!
Perseverance
Adults often do not have the staying power or discipline to learn a foreign language – a baby learning to walk puts us to shame. He tumbles over endless times but he gets up for another go. Adults are easily discouraged. It can take years of study and practice to speak fluently. (Do we speak our own language all the time without making any mistakes?) The best policy is to try your hardest but do not set your goals too high. Accept that you cannot do everything as well as you would like to do. You should not expect to make constant progress either: beginners feel they are sailing along whilst it is difficult to break through the ‘intermediate plateau’.
Lessons
Mastering a language cannot be ‘bought’ as such. Language lessons with a teacher are only useful if an adult is motivated:
there is no waving of a magic wand or a secret switch that the teacher turns on. Worse, many of us have awful school memories of being force-fed irregular verbs and being told we will never be linguists. You will know when you are ready for lessons – and some people never need them.
When it does come to enrolling for a language course, the mistake that is often made is that a class is chosen because the hours (or price) suit best. Ask questions about the make-up of the group because you will not make much progress if the class is not homogeneous. Beginners feel they are holding back other, more proficient, members of the group – and this is often true! Objectives are important too: do you need the language for your work while the others just want a survival course?
Expensive sets of language CDs or cassettes are sometimes bought, too, in the mistaken belief that it is an instant way of learning a language. You may well be demotivated by the very idea of all the time required to work through them. Language is a living thing – it is about communication: you need a few experiences of looking at real-life people in the eye first. Buy the expensive kits later on, if you want, once you get going.
For adults, language learning is a long, hard process and we must not expect too much of ourselves too quickly. Think of it in terms of brushing your teeth: if you are serious about this, it is something that you have to spend a bit of time on every day.
What is there left to say but
bonne chance?